India at the World Cup - Just a dream

With the 2014 FIFA World Cup just a mere 7 months away, there is perhaps one question on the minds of the football following crowd of India : Why does a country of a billion people with a red hot economy fail to produce a football side which qualifies for the World cup?

The latest FIFA ranking reveals India at 169th position,their lowest ever. This should come as a shame to a country that has such a huge population and is economically sound. To add to the shame, countries with 1/4th of the population of our country are placed way above us in the rankings.

But it wasn’t always like this.

Playing barefoot with reasonable ball skills, India actually qualified for the World Cup in Brazil in 1950 – the only time it has done so. But lack of foreign exchange, the prospects of a long sea journey and an insistence on playing barefoot meant that the team never made it to Brazil.

Thereafter, it was all downhill for Indian football.They never qualified for the Olympics after 1960 and when they somehow managed to pick up a mere bronze medal at the 1970 Asian games in Bangkok, the period was described as the ‘swan song of Indian football, such less are the expectations.

So why can’t a country where a third of its population is under 14 years of age – a nursery of potential footballers – with a long history of club football can’t put together 15 young men who can kick a ball in the right direction and take it to the World Cup?

Without doubt, there was never any lack of football fans among the young generation here.You can still see youngsters wearing their favourite club’s jerseys during the day of the match to show their support.They even wake up till late night during the special champions league matches.All these show just how caring they are about the game and how much football is a part of their daily lives.

So there is no lack of willingness on part of the players to take part in the game.It’s just the management in India that has no clue about what they are doing and what has to be done.Also, football, like most things in India, is run by politicians, who have wrested control of most sports – the chief of the football federation now is the federal aviation minister. Lack of professionalism, cronyism, indifference and politicisation is not letting the game thrive, so fans have deserted it to root for their international heroes. Sponsors are indifferent because the quality of the game is appalling.

In retrospect, it would appear that India was never serious about football the way it was about cricket. The AIFF, which runs the game in India, was formed in 1937, but took more than a decade to get affiliated with FIFA, the world’s apex football body. India insisted on playing barefoot when other nations were putting their boots on and the game was changing fast.

There have been occasional bursts of hope followed by darkness again. India’s only football icon of sorts is Baichung Bhutia from the small north-eastern state of Sikkim. He was the first Indian player to sign up with an European Club and had an indifferent three year stint in the third tier of the English league. Bhutia brought some glamour and respect back to the game in India, but what can one player do? Half a dozen foreign coaches have been hired over the years to whip the national side into a competitive outfit, but nothing much has happened.

So India sadly remains an enthusiastic spectator without a team at the world cup.As a famous writer once said,”we don’t have to paint like Leonardo to appreciate the Mona Lisa”,with world cup football,too,we Indians have mastered outsourcing our entertainment.